Movie Review: The Golden Compass

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12-10-07, 10:30 pm


The Golden Compass Directed by Chris Weitz

Based upon Philip Pullman's The Northern Lights, this first work in the His Dark Materials trilogy is supposed to be the atheistic antidote to all those Christian fantasy films inspired by the likes of Tolkein and CS Lewis.

Pullman originally wrote the series as an attack on the Catholic church, an organisation which he thought obscurantist and a danger to the healthy development of children everywhere.

Following criticism from the producers, the film has toned down its anti-Catholic message and substituted an antipathy towards authoritarianism in general, since it serves to stifle the human spirit.

Predictably, the fundamentalists are up in arms. Some continue to object that it's still anti-Catholic, while others claim that it shouldn't have conceded anything to the clerical lobby.

Unlike most children's tales, it has a heroine rather than a hero. Better still, she's supposed to be working class, not the kind of middle-class demoiselle that we have come to expect throughout bourgeois literature.

Not that Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra is immediately recognisable as a guttersnipe as she tries and fails to mimic the sort of working-class accent that went out of fashion with Mary Poppins.

Still, she's not some cutesy chick and manages to convey the impression of a gutsy girl who's not scared to stand up to the Magisterium, the organisation that rules this parallel world.

It's a place where the souls of people are made manifest in the form of an animal or demon, with Lyra having a cute shape-shifter called Pantalaimon (voiced by Freddie Highmore).

The object of the Magisterium is to exorcise the souls of spirited children, a procedure that they describe as 'intercision' and is an obvious reference to inquisitorial torture.

The film opens among the dreaming spires of Oxford. Our heroine is seen standing up to the local gang before she discovers that there's a plot to kill her Uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig) by the Magisterium.

What's more, there's an organisation called The Gobblers that abducts children. It spirits off her friend Roger (Ben Walker) who works in the kitchen, so she feels compelled to try to rescue him.

Meanwhile, she's being courted by the cruel Mrs Coulter - Nicole Kidman running through her scary routine - who makes Cruella deVille look like a maiden aunt.

Enter the Alethiometer or Golden Compass - a clockwork device that tells the truth to those who know how to dial in the details. It seems to me that anything of that sort implies determinism - it's not exactly scientific materialism. But, what the heck, it provides for fiction that requires the same nonsense as all such stories. It's a good old-fashioned quest and a battle against the forces of evil.

If you haven't read the book, you might have seen the posters. The ones featuring a huge polar bear. He's Lorek Byrnison (Ian McKellan), an alcoholic living in shame since his kingdom was usurped.

Now, he's also got a mission. He and Lyra set out with the help of band of seafaring Gyptians led by Lord Farr (Jim Carter), an annoying aeronautical cowboy (Sam Elliot) and a kindly witch (Eva Green).

There are some remarkable CGI effects, the best to do with the look of the Magisterium - St Peters crossed with Senate House - and a ferocious battle between the polar bears.

To tell the truth, it doesn't make much sense, but it has its moments before you arrive at the denouement only to discover that you have to wait for the following two films before the conclusion.

It may be anticlerical, but it's not averse to the commercial tricks of capitalism.

From Morning Star